Destin Brass Products Co.

Even though Mr. Fordham mentions that he in his “Statement of Cost of Goods Manufactured for Year Ended Dec. 31 1956” that he depreciated $24,000 of Plant and Equipment, I decided to change the depreciation schedule so that PP&E would be fully depreciated by the end of the 5 year period. Thus, I used a straight-line depreciation schedule that accumulated $40,000 worth of depreciation per year, which was spread evenly across the 12 months of this Balance Sheet (or $3,333.33 per month).

The purpose of this report is discussing the case of Wilkerson Company that confronting tough competition in price cutting in pumps which caused to a big drop of pre-tax operating income from 10% to 3%. After observing the existing costing allocation, we found out there is an issue on the existing costing report that the manager could not be able to see the real situation. In light of this, there will be brought to the discussion on the feasibility of using an alternative costing method – Activity based costing (ABC) in the latter paragraphs.

1. The first step to evaluating the cash flows is to conduct the depreciation tax flow analysis. Depreciation is not a cash flow, but the depreciation expense lows the taxes payable for the company. As a result, the tax effect of deprecation needs to be calculated as a cash flow. There are two depreciable items on the company's balance sheet the building and the equipment. The equipment is known to have a seven year depreciable life, which will be assumed to be straight line. The building is also assumed to be subject to straight line depreciation, this time of forty years. The tax saving reflects the depreciation expense multiplied by the tax rate, which in this case is assumed to be 28%. The following table illustrates the tax effect in future dollars of the depreciation expense:

Company Wide Overhead Rate equal Forecast Overhead divided by Expected Machine Hours Overhead Rate equal $480,000 equal $6 per machine hour 80,000. Company Wide Rate: Direct Material Costs x Batch Size plus Direct Labor Costs x Batch Size Maxiflow: Alaska: 135 x 20 equal 2700 110 x 20 equal 2200 75 x 20 equal 1500 95 x 20 equal 1900 equal $4200 per batch equal $4100 per batch Departmental Rate. Direct Materials Costs plus Direct Labor Costs divided by Each Department Hour Maxiflow: 135 plus 75 equal $210 Radiator Parts Fabrication: 210 divided by 28 equal $7.50 per batch Radiator Assembly, Weld, and Test equal 210 divided by 30 equal $7 per batch Compressor Parts Fabrication: 210 divided by 32 equal $6.60 per batch Compressor Assembly and Test: 210 divided by 26 equal $8.10 per batch Alaska: 110 plus 95 equal 205 Radiator Parts Fabrication: 205 divided by 16 equal $12.80 per batch Radiator Assembly, Weld, and Test: 205 divided by 74 equal $2.70 per batch Compressor Parts Fabrication: 205 divided by 8 equal $25.60 per batch Compressor Assembly and Test: 205 divided by 66 equal $3.10 per batch. There was only a $100 difference between Maxiflow and Alaska when it came to company-wide rates per batch.

Marketing is challenging for Wilkerson because they are no longer holding a competitive advantage in the valve product line, nor are they price leaders in the pump line.

-The estimated depreciation lives on certain U.S. plants, machinery and equipment changed. The economic life of these assets was increased, so the depreciation expense was lowered.

Furthermore, by adopting a historical cost approach the assets will be depreciated over that useful life which has been estimated. With the useful life of an asset being so subjective it is hard to apportion a useful figure to depreciation. By increasing the useful life of an asset you are effectively spreading the depreciation expense over a longer period of time resulting in lower depreciation expenses and vice versa. In fact, Zheng et al. (2012) go one step further and consider depreciation to be a strategy for managers to manipulate profits.

Pumps are commodity products, produced in high volumes for a market with high price competition - price cutting by

* The Pumps total product variable costs are $406,250, the Pumps total fixed costs are $316,501.94 and the Activity Based Costing Pumps cost per unit it $58.

This haevily disguised case is set in the “nature “woodstoves business in 1986. It is not based on The Vermont Castings Company. The issue is product line strategy based on product line profitability.

Historic cost depreciation is being used which leads to skewed numbers that misrepresent how well a product line will continue to operate in the future due to understated replacement value of fixed assets.

The above cost system was efficient during the 1980s because it split up overhead over three cost pools, adding an additional pool, which has machine hours as its cost driver. This proved efficient because “[w]ith increased usage of automated machines, direct labor run time no longer reflected the amount of processing being performed on parts, particularly when one operator was responsible for several machines.” Packet, pg. 7.

• This cost method does not provide the best system for JDCW’s cost allocation. By using only three overhead rates the present system grossly undermines the true production costs since other activities of the production process are not acknowledged.

In addition, it wrongly allocated its indirect costs at volume bases. The use of process technology mentioned in the case led to an increase in factory overheads Since direct labor hours was not a cost driver of them, allocating its large proportion of fixed factory overheads and other indirect batch-level costs on the basis of DLHs in this cost system did not accurately measure how resources were being used. As a result, these inaccurate allocations would have significant costs to Elkay. Moreover, it disregarded its cost structure in which most costs were “fixed” that would not vary in the short run and should be allocated based on its practical capacity. By using the “actual sales volume” as the allocation base for allocating its large corporate overheads, this standard costing system in fact over-pricing its products for its actual productivity was lower than the practical capacity under the intense competition. As a consequence of all problem within the standard costing system, PPD urgently needed an accurate costing system.